I was 12 years old I think, in class 6, when I first put my hands on a set book. It was Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice.” Somehow, someway, Despite the most convoluted English ever put on tree skin I actually managed to understand and enjoy the story (There is no universe where cross-dressing Italians trying to win a dude’s pound of flesh in court is not funny). Thus began my foray into reading set books before I even stepped into high school. Coming to birth, betrayal in the city, when the sun goes down, River and the Source, I read them all.
By the time I was getting to high school, I’d read the river and the source just about ten times. I could recite the Luo epic all the way from the first love story to the last one (and count every got In-between.) I am now a few years out of high school and it’s hitting me that if I mention river and the source to my underclassmen where I study, they will think it’s the title of Chris browns new album, Ladies and gentlemen, it’s official, I am old! For the life of me, I don’t know how long I’ve been old for. Honestly, it’s hit me like a hurricane and the worst part is it’s only downhill from here! My only consolation is that I’m the wrong gender to be on the fast track to ending up alone with a bunch of cats.
I’m finding myself generally on the fence on how to feel about this sudden, profound realization of my age. On one side there is the satisfaction, as a 2001 baby to finally get to harangue people who were born in 2005 (Petty I know but immensely satisfying, also how the hell are 2005 babies already in college?!). The feeling of having more experience than a whole swathe of human beings really cannot be understated. It’s like pouring honey on your soul, and you are Winnie the pooh. My towering wealth of knowledge (ahem, read 3 extra years of bad decisions) on matters of Nairoberry, heartbreak and character development have me feeling like a veritable giant! Sometimes I even fee fi fo fum under my breath when no one is listening.
It’s not all fun and games however, one barely has time to revel in the superiority complex of being older before life deals them a very bony backhand of existential crisis. Suddenly, you are expected to have a purpose, direction, motivation and (shudder !!) to know what you want to do with your life! It’s at moments like this that living under a rock like a certain starfish from a certain cartoon becomes incredibly exciting. They said adulting was a scam, by God, they didn’t tell us half of it, it’s like saying the NYS scandal was some small theft by a five-year-old!
The most absolutely horrifying thing about adulting is that tea doesn’t seem to work the way it used to! I used to be able to down a nice mug of ginger tea and scrub my psyche of all the problematic cobwebs of deplorable thoughts in there. These days the cobwebs are so many that if I want to use tea to do spring cleaning then ill probably be needing a gallon a day (now the eternal tea urns in the high school staffrooms are starting to make sense.) For all intents and purposes, I should probably graduate to something stronger that tea but my mind, being starved of ADHD medication since diagnosis, might just decide that the new cleaning agent serves as medication and that’s just not a prescription I’m trying to get.
Manenoz 